Romanian gambling regulator highlights impact of new powers

The ONJN has published its annual activity report detailing enforcement action carried out over the past year.

Romania. The National Office for Gambling (ONJN) has highlighted the impact of reforms in its annual activity report covering April 2025 to April 2026. It particularly emphasised its enforcement efforts against unlicensed gambling.

Over the past year, the ONJN issued more than 60 removal orders and blacklisted over 300 illegal gambling websites. Investigations into alleged gross gaming revenue manipulation and unpaid taxes led to 70 criminal complaints and 60 licence revocations. 

Between April 2025 and April 2026, ONJN carried out around 11,000 inspections in total, disabled or confiscated 260 devices and filed 70 criminal complaints.

This comes after legislative changes under Law no. 141/2025 expanded ONJN’s powers, allowing it to order the removal of illegal gambling content and require monthly reportts from class II operators on player attempts to access unlicensed platforms. 

Land‑based gaming operators were the subject of around 7,000 inspections, which led to fines totalling 8.1m lei (€1.5m) in fines. It also conducted 3,500 inspections of online operators, which were handed fines totalling 1.2 million lei.

The regulator also highlighted the improvement in the process of self-exclusion from gambling. It reportted that after inheriting more than 30,000 unresolved requests at the start of its mandate, the system covers around 54,000 individuals. 

A draft Emergency Ordinance submitted to the Ministry of Finance proposes a unified self-exclusion framework across land‑based and online operators, mandating ID checks, cooling‑off periods, and penalties of up to 100,000 lei for non‑compliance. 

The ONJN noted that it had also launched a public digital register of gaming machines, hosted in the Government Private Cloud. Each device must now carry a QR code linked to its entry and geolocation tracking. The regulator described this as a “unique European mechanism”.

President Vlad‑Cristian Soare said: “This year has shown that change is possible. It does not come easily and is not done without resistance. There have been roadblocks, opposition and attempts to slow down essential projects, both from within and without.”

He added: “The direction has been maintained, the projects have continued and the investigations and initiatives initiated must be followed through.”

Meanwhile, more local authorities have banned the approval of new physical slot halls in Romania following the central government’s decision to decentralise licensing. On Monday, councillors in Iasi unanimously approved a project to ban slot machine gambling within the municipality. Councillors now want to ban gambling advertising too.

Gaming halls will also gradually disappear from the municipality of Sibiu as their permits expire, after local councillors voted to ban them. According to mayor Astrid Fodor, at least three venues’ licences have already expired leading them to close in recent days.

Fodor said councillors’ vote “corresponded to the wishes of the opinion polls that were conducted, the debates that were held, at the first public debate, the citizens expressed the same sentiment.”